Hannah Jones

Digital Diaries

[hannahcherie22]

Harajuku Barbie

Nicki Minaj is known for her multiple alter egos, like Roman, Rosa, Martha, and especially her Harajuku Barbie ego, along with many others.  Minaj uses the image of Barbie in a very unique way.  Some people think that Barbie stands for being fake, plastic, and giving young girls and women the wrong ideas of what they should look like, thinking that white, blonde, busty, and skinny is the only way to be seen as the an “American Girl.”  Minaj uses the architype Barbie and changes it with her multicultural background and her figure.  She’s trying to change the way we think about Barbie.  By her calling herself Barbie, she’s trying to show girls that anyone of them could be Barbie.  Even though there are many different races of Barbie’s that have been made over the years, they are always looked at as Barbie’s friends and not the actual Barbie.  She’s trying to get rid of that notion that Barbie can only be a white, skinny blonde.  Minaj gets a lot of hate and backlash for the Barbie references because of the idea that she’s helping and making more standards of how a woman is supposed to look.  I think using the Harajuku Barbie, Minaj is limiting herself in the way she can portray herself in music videos and during performances even though she has all of these other alter egos because she always goes back to that glassy eyed, doll like look in a lot of her videos.  This could be portrayed as being an “air head” and plastic like all these people are raising concern about.  Even though Minaj is trying to use this tough, carefree Barbie persona, it can still be interpreted in many different ways by the audience of girls that follow her.  Since Minaj has gotten to be a lot more popular since she heavily worked this Barbie persona, I think she is starting to empower her fans in a better and different way through being more herself.

[hannahcherie22]

Promote Respect

When you see a woman featured in a rap video, or any music video for that matter, the majority of the time they are wearing little to nothing, they are dancing around in a sexual way, and there are a bunch of guys or a single guy standing somewhere in the shot ogling over the way the girl looks or is dancing up on her.  Women in these music videos are represented as sexual objects, or just something to look at and something you can do with as you will.  These are types of videos that show a younger crowd of girls and boys what “sexy” should look like.  Teens see these videos and think that that is how you treat a girl – like an object.  Roxanne Gay’s piece “Blurred Lines Indeed” talks about Robin Thicke’s music video to the song “Blurred Lines.”  In the video all the girls are walking around in front of the three men in nothing but a tan thong while he sings about giving them what they really want.  This just shows how little respect he has for women and how these women see themselves.  These women were probably paid a lot to be in the music video topless which sends the message that the female body is something someone can purchase like it’s nothing.  Music videos need to stop sending the wrong messages to young girls out there who feel like that’s the way they need to act or that’s the way they “should” look just because they see it all over the internet and in popular culture.  Music and social media should teach young girls to respect and love themselves and teach young boys to not objectify women like they are just something to look at.  Like Roxanne Gay points out, “boys want what they want” and who is to tell them they can’t have what they want?  Society needs to get out of this mindset of “boys will be boys” and teach young men to respect women.  Instead of using music videos to influence these objectifying behaviors, they need to be used to show and influence respect.  

[hannahcherie22]

“All About That Bass”

In the song “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor, Meghan is trying to get the point across that every girl’s body is beautiful and we should all love ourselves.  Everything in the video is covered in pinks and pastels giving a childlike feeling.  In the song, Meghan is talking about a time when her mom told her “not to worry about her size” and “boys like a little more booty to hold at night,” which is saying that it’s alright to be a little bigger and someone will love you for you. But with closer examination of some of the lyrics and a few of the scenes in the music video, it could also give a viewer the impression that she is “skinny shaming.” While trying to make girls “with booty” feel inspired, she’s unintentionally sending girls who are naturally really skinny, without the “womanly” figure, the wrong message making them feel like their bodies aren’t good enough for a man.  Closer looking at the video and lyrics you can see that at one point she shows a stereotypical looking model in a plastic dress and an African American girl twerking beside her and actually pushes the model out of the way with her butt.  During this time of the song the lyrics are “I’m bringing booty back, go ‘head and tell them skinny bitches that.” This is being said while we see the model getting pushed, then the lyrics say “No, I’m just playing, I know you think you’re fat,” even though she goes on to say this, the music video speaks louder than the lyrics when we see the skinny girl get pushed.  I think in a way the music video could give someone the impression that Meghan Trainor is “skinny shaming” and trying to tell girls that men won’t like you if you don’t have a “booty”.  While the writer’s intentions for this song were to make all girl’s feel good about their bodies, viewers who don’t fit the image of the video, could take this a completely different way.

[hannahcherie22]

Raising Awareness

Popular culture plays a significant hand in consciousness raising.  Through television, books, magazines, and all the different platforms of social media that we, as young adults, are always browsing, it makes these perfect places to spread the word on important and news worthy topics like animal abuse, domestic violence, and gender equality.  To be a good participant in a movement, we need to be informed and learn all we can about what it is that we are actually fighting for.  Feminism, for example, is a movement that gets a bad reputation for being “male hating” or “anti-men,” this is due to lack of education on the topic with the people judging it and also by some people who claim to be “feminists.”  I have to admit, I do not know nearly as much about feminism as others may, but I have learned enough about it to understand a lot of the beliefs and motivations associated with the movement.  Since we rely mostly on television and the internet to find out what’s going on in the world, we need to start here to educate people on feminism and other topics of talk.  In Bell Hook’s “Consciousness-Raising: A Constant Change of Heart,” she talks about “consciousness raising groups” or “CR groups” where women in the earlier years of the feminist movement would go to vent about their struggles with gender inequality and confess on their own sexist thoughts and beliefs.  These conversations are what started the movement and the end to them slowed the movement’s progress, according to Hook.  We need to incorporate these once movement driving groups back into our current daily lives.  The only way to break our society’s resistance to feminism is to incorporate it into every aspect of our lives and educate everyone, both men and women, on what it really means to call yourself a feminist.  To do this, more shows should be made where there are actual men and women talking about the world’s sexism and their own personal sexist behaviors, whether it be in a fictional show setting or a talk show, and they need to encourage talk about these topics on social media like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.  Encouraging audience interaction could help keep the conversation going and hopefully promote progress.

[hannahcherie22]

“Bad” Feminist

Roxane Gay, in “Feminism (n.): Plural”, understands feminism through her set of beliefs and changes she wants to see in the world.  She expresses her belief in equal rights and opportunities for men and women, including work pay and healthcare affordability, and also reproductive rights for women.  She talks about being ashamed in her teenage years and early twenties of being called a feminist due to the intended insult behind the word and the negative connotation that now surrounds the title.  It wasn’t until later in her life that she discovered that there are many things that come along with a population driven movement, like the extremists that give the group a bad reputation and the people who are trying to keep the movement from succeeding.  These types of issues are what have made people, like Roxane, skeptical about actually taking on the label of a feminist.  After reading her piece, I have seen this in myself, where I believe very similar ideas but I do not want to be associated with the term “feminist” because of all the ridicule that can come with it.  Roxane mentions being a “bad” feminist and embracing it because she didn’t embody the “mainstream feminist” due to some of her differing beliefs, behaviors, and traits.  I think many women nowadays would classify as her phrase “bad” feminist.  Women, myself included, listen to rap songs that are clearly objectifying women and watch movies and TV shows that do the same thing, but do not bat an eye at it because it has become a social norm that a lot of us tend to overlook.  Personally, I have never identified as a feminist because of hearing about men hating feminists and how they believe women should be superior to men, which is not what I believe in.  After actually learning about feminism in classes and not just what I heard from social media, I learned that that was not the case, even though there will always be those who do believe in that way, the majority of feminists have similar beliefs as myself in wanting equal opportunities for all no matter the gender, race, class, or background.  I believe that everyone has the right to respect and happiness.